“We put importance on different things.”In our session this week we looked at attention and multi (or mono) tasking. And it allowed an interesting understanding to begin to emerge. It should also be made clear that this was a one-to-one session and so our experience was quite intense.For Matty the beginning of the work on attention created a sense of tunnel vision which was “...stressful, but not in a negative sense”. In this beginning we played Britton’s Ballgame but with the instruction to be aware of the entire room. Matty’s main focus was the game, not the wider awareness. However once we began to add further tasks and instructions he stated that began to open up. This is what we want, an opening, a widening of attention. That there is more out there, or in here, than we usually see. The exercise was relaxed and stressful (at the same time) but also still play.There are so many good points that Matty shared afterwards that I feel are so helpful to an overarching theme that I feel we need to just quote him for a bit: “You assess the amount of things you can take on.” & “In here it becomes less of a thing but we walk out and it comes right back.”. And through these nuggets of interest we built our session, or our session build around us.What emerged tonight was task management and time management, automation so that things can become easier (and then more complex- or perhaps deeper in its layers?) and the need for tasks to have a context. This context is a vital, and I feel, fundamental component.But the big question for me here is: What is the context?I guess there is an element of conceptualisation here. The exercises, in an Applied Improvisation context, are very good analogies for our work or lives and this way of thinking is similar for me and the work of the performer. The game or exercise is a good analogy for the play (literally a play within Play) or dance, or whatever we are creating. If Matty states “You assess the amount of things you can take on.” then we are not only playing, we are in a constant state of flux just as we are in life and as we should be in performance (otherwise we are not really there and in the moment).“In here it becomes less of a thing, but we walk out and it comes right back.” We feel safer in a studio than we do in the real world. Safer to take risks? Or are the risks intrinsically less risky in here? We can walk away from the studio, but not life. So here we find the Paradox of the Actor again.

reality/non-reality.

truth/untruth.

you/not you.

performance/non-performance.

acting/not acting.

All things we toy with in the real world and feel more able to access in the studio, class, session. In acting terms we might look at what gives the ‘illusion of truth’ but what might be a non-acting version of this? In the real world the ‘illusion of truth’ would probable be seen as lying or a good sales pitch.Can we just switch on a set of layers to gain the illusion, a sense of reality or truth?

“I’d rather have run the scene eight times than have wasted that time in chattering away about abstractions. An actor gets the right thing by doing it over and over. Arguing about motivations and so forth is a lot of rot.” (Roach citing Olivier, 1993, p153)

For me it is the repetition of the task (whatever it may be) that allows us to get it as Olivier suggests above. But if we are to look at multiple layers of performance then we must practice this multi-layering, this multi-tasking. We must know the difference between mono-tasking and multi. We must be able to have our attention on everything and nothing.So how have these ideas of Tig and Layers come together this week? Well with just two of us to explore things we played with thinking about either mono-tasking or multitasking and how much can you really concentrate on at any one time. We got to five: Ballgame (with two balls), Meisner Repetition, moving round and between chairs, counting things around the room and eventually stacking the chairs as we played. So we discovered the layers helped to widen our perceptions. One game with one ball narrowed our perceptions, even though we began with being aware of the entire room, the air conditioning breeze, the space, how it made us feel (we both know it very well), the music that was playing (and when it stopped).Here we saw Apperception in action, one of us lost the music. It faded to nothing, no longer existed for them, but then resurfaced and actually stopped as the speaker ran out of power. It begs the question of what is important in each moment? And this was answered at the end of the session with all our elements of play. For one of us the counting of the electric plugs in the room was least important, for the other it was the chairs. One of us stacked most of the chairs, the other counted most of the plugs. So we were capable of more between us, even though that was not the task.When we discussed tonight’s work there was a sense of the tension or stress in the exercises, but there was a joy in the stress, in the difficulty. Can we create further set-ups that can make a similar outcome, but that is closer to performance? What we are looking at here in this juncture is pre-expressivity, but what happens in actual performance? Is it enough to recognise these stresses then have the ‘illusion of truth’ from the working through those stresses from different exercises or tasks?Within all of this we explored: task management, appreception, perception, success/failure, togetherness/support, pressure, automation and decisions through focus.So I need to think about the purpose of this layering exercise (the context?) and whether within this structure new participants can begin to see as much in the Meisner Repetition element if they have never done true repetition before. I feel that the other elements bring so much to the space that the participants are forced into dealing with their impulses (especially physical) but perhaps it is better to think if they will recognise such things as impulses at all. I also want to examine how all of this affects their voices, bodies and their emotions. But this isn’t just for the new people to this work, or any work for that matter, but for everyone.Some of us still feel we can’t pause the game, and hold the space; this makes me wonder how we break free from our usual social constraints, how will I feel as facilitator when the participants do so, entirely of their own volition? What will this do to me when I appear to lose control while they gain it? How will it feel on both sides?What I want to explore is how this all works with text, choreography, improvisation, a specific conversation task. We will explore the improvisation game of Alphabet with these layers. This week we didn’t do anything creative, we just did. So, thinking forward, let’s see where this goes.